This invention relates to the safe disposal of used tires and the creation of useful fences from used tires.
My invention thus has important ecological benefits.
Scrap Tire Disposal
Every year in the United States there are 280 million scrap tires generated. While some used racing tires are used as temporary barriers at race tracks, and other proposed uses have been patented, there are possibly over a half billion scrap tires located in illegal dumpsites across the United States. The existence of these scrap tires creates environmental hazards and concerns. The tires collect and hold stagnant water, which becomes an excellent mosquito-breeding system. With the spread of the West Nile Flue virus by mosquitoes, this pestilence is more deadly and serious than ever before. The tires sometimes catch fire and, if they are in the customary unregulated pile, the fire is very difficult to extinguish. A burning tire pile will create black smoke, soot, terrible odor and serious air pollution. Residue from the burning also creates soil and ground-water pollution.
The potential for severe fire and/or smoldering of scrap tire stock piles exists across the United States. State and local landfills have become burdened by the large landfill resources required to dispose of used tires. In fact, most local and state authorities charge tire merchants a disposal fee of one to two dollars per standard automobile tire. Of course, this cost is normally passed on to the consuming public. Cradle-to-grave tracking systems like those applicable to toxic waste have been enacted to regulate the problem.
Threats of fines and other punishments have greatly reduced the problem, but at substantial costs to the consuming public and the handlers. This cost creates incentives to cheat on the regulatory system, and it is believed that many do. Figures published by the Rubber Manufacturers Association indicated that 60 million scrap tires per year remain unaccounted for.
Many novel ideas have been explored to convert the scrap tire liability into an asset because it is realized that economic benefit, rather than regulatory coercion, is the better solution. California alone spent $25 million in 2002 searching for an economic solution and has budgeted $28 million on the effort for 2003. Nearly every state has a similar program on a smaller scale. To-date, most ventures have been marginally successful at best, even with the subsidy of coercive threats.
Consumers pay $1.00 to $2.00 per tire for disposal plus $1.00 per tire average tax to the state to clean up illegal dumps. Clean-up costs for states have ranged from $0.75 to $10.00 per tire. The potential economic benefit gained from properly disposing of used tires has led many to attempt to solve the disposal problems noted above.
A common technique for disposing of whole tires is to shred the tires into discrete pieces and dumping the scraps into landfills. Although this decreases the overall landfill volume required for disposal and prevents tires from floating, it does not address other problems associated with tire disposal. First, the tires still prevent fire and/or contamination problems discussed above. Second, the process of shredding adds significant cost to the disposal process without any associated benefit. Moreover, mere shredding does not offer an alternative productive use for scrap tires and continues to present many landfill problems.
Recycling scrap tires into other commercially useful products offers another disposal alternative. Tires are often used to make other petroleum-based products, such as floor mats. However, because of the problems attributed to recycling, such as cost and lack of potential use, less than 7% of scrap tires are recycled in this matter. Accordingly, tire recycling has not proven to be a viable tire disposal alternative.
Attempts have been made to utilize scrap tires as an energy source. Specifically, furnaces have been developed to burn scrap tires in the creation of heat energy. This disposal technique has also proven of limited value. First, high capital cost associated with the development of furnaces has curtailed their widespread use. Moreover, other environmental concerns are associated with the burning of tires.
My invention minimizes both hazards by preventing the collection of water to eliminate mosquito breeding and by spreading the tires in long lines so that, if they do catch fire, the non-burning source of the fence, can easily and readily be removed from the burning portion so that the fire quickly burns itself out from the lack of a continuing source of fuel.
Five Primary Types of Fences
Large amounts of scrap tire casings could readily and economically be used to provide primarily five types of fences.
The first type would simply be an enclosure for farm animals or a boundary marker for farms and ranches. The second type would be a highway safety fence dividing lanes of opposite-bound traffic to prevent disastrous head-on collisions. A third would be a sound barrier fence to shield other areas of human activity from highway noise. And the fourth would be a wall around unsightly industrial or other areas to screen them from less unsightly uses. According to my invention, there are various means of arranging the tires in relation to one another and binding them together to create varying degrees of resistance to possible collision, highway noise, resistance to animals, visibility screening, and attractiveness. The cost of construction will be slightly affected by the method chosen.
Farm or Ranch Fencing
The bluegrass country of Kentucky is renowned for its beautiful stone fences that mark the boundaries of many large farms. The inventor imagines that the stones comprising these fences originally littered the fields making the fields difficult to till. Removing the stones from the fields made the fields more tillable and, when the stones were placed on the boundaries of the fields in the form of fences, the stones had less distance to be carried and became permanent boundary markers for the farm owner's field that endure for many years even without mortar and with little maintenance.
Old tires do not have quite the same proximity to their final resting place in the form of farm fences building blocks, as the stones in the fields did. But old tires are a ubiquitous problem nationwide, so these building blocks are not far from farmers and ranchers needing fences. Placing these building blocks in the form of farm or ranch fences would convert a serious societal and possessor liability into an asset that would endure for years with little or no maintenance, and this conversion would greatly reduce the initial construction cost of fencing to the farmer or rancher.
The problems with old tires and the needs of farmers and ranchers are thoroughly explained in the Moore Tire Fence U.S. Pat. No. 4,022,434. Advantages of my invention over the Moore Tire Fence include:
(1) The tires lay flat and are self-supporting and more stable, needing fewer expensive additions to make them function.
(2) They are easier to build and, if necessary, to repair, needing little, if any, non-tire accessories that would increase the cost.
(3) In the horizontal position, they are less subject to the ravages of gravity and other natural elements.
(4) Also, in the horizontal position, they are more aesthetic because, from the common perspective, they look less like construction from old tires.
Highway Collision Barrier Fence
With my invention embodied in its strongest form of fence as a wall, it is doubtful that such wall can be broken through by a collision with even a very heavy tractor trailer combination, a 70,000 pound 18-wheeler, for example. Also, in its strongest form, it creates a relatively “soft” barrier, which helps to protect the occupants of vehicles colliding with the wall, and protects those in highway lanes on the other side of the fence. This “soft” but strong and collision energy absorption effect occurs because the resistance of the fence grows and accumulates as the initial portions of the fence with which collision is made, are moved farther and farther from their initial position. The greater the movement of any portion of the fence, the greater the amount of the drag that is required to move it further, so long as the binding mechanism remains intact. This is because the original section of the fence moves rather easily but it must pull along more and more of the fence's weight in order to keep moving. The flex and resistance of the fence may be increased by constructing the wall in a wave pattern rather than a straight line. This wave pattern might be considered more aesthetically pleasing than a straight linear pattern. Finally, the wave pattern of construction will increase the stability of higher fences. In addition, if the fence is broken through or compromised in any way, it is easily and readily repaired or put back in place.
Highway safety engineers are faced with the problem of keeping separate many miles of traffic moving in opposite directions. Generally, the separation is maintained only by a little space and the alertness of the drivers. As that alertness breaks down, disasters occur and many families have been wiped out, not to mention the property damage done. Economically feasible solutions have not been found. Society is plagued with a superabundance of waste tires that endure the natural elements indefinitely and take tremendous punishment without noticeable effects. Both of these problems can be solved simultaneously by my invention, creating an inexpensive and effective deterrent to head-on collisions.
Highway Noise Barrier Fences
The proliferation of superhighways and widening of existing highways have required that they pass near residential neighborhoods and other areas of human activity where the noise from such highways causes a substantial nuisance to the proper enjoyment and use of the neighboring property. More and more, highway engineers are taking note of the problem and attempting to solve it with various types of noise barriers, usually taking the form of walls that are both unsightly and expensive. An effort to incorporate rubber salvaged from waste tires has been shown to increase the effectiveness of the noise abating qualities of such walls, apparently by decreasing its echoing ability.
An effective noise abatement wall made from waste tires would, in its preferred embodiment, need to be free of gaps. It would be constructed preferably as shown in FIGS. 5 and 6 herein. The visual aspects of such a wall could be improved by covering it with vines that also bind the tires together. Vines may also increase its noise abatement qualities by providing additional irregular, flexible material to absorb sound waves. This gap-free construction of the sound barrier wall fence would increase the amount of waste tires to be disposed of in a given area and would increase the rigidity of the fence.
Visibility Screening Fence
Many industrial and commercial uses are considered to be unsightly. Screening efforts have even been enacted into law to surround such uses as junkyards and landfills. While not all uses demand screening laws in all situations, intense uses will more likely be allowed by land use permitting officials in some situations, if the requested use can be screened appropriately from nearby sensitive uses.
Efforts to provide such screening sometimes fail because attractive screening is expensive, and inexpensive screening frequently deteriorates to become less attractive than the use it is supposed to hide.
Scrap tires will never be made into a thing of beauty. The fact that they are readily recognized as waste, and the fact that they frequently are discarded in areas of otherwise pristine beauty, creates a natural aesthetic prejudice that probably cannot be overcome. However, placing tires to create orderliness and purpose may succeed in overcoming some of this adverse impression. By analogy, stones strewn haphazardly throughout a field are ugly to a farmer, but when removed from the field and placed by artisans to become a boundary wall, the stone walls become a thing of beauty. Their durability and low maintenance adds both to their beauty and their profit making.
Interestingly, one of the least expensive walls to build from scrap tires may be the most attractive; that is, one where the only binding material is made of vines. When fully covered with vines, such a wall may appear to be a well-kept hedge. Such hedge-like walls could be used to screen parking lots, junkyards, or other intense uses that are generally considered unsightly.
In whatever way the screening wall is constructed from the tires, its creation, like the removal of stones from the field to build a boundary wall, serves the dual purpose of removing them from places where they are a problem, to place them where they are useful to human endeavors.
Bumper Fence
Industrial buildings, and in particular metal buildings, need vehicle bumpers to protect their exterior walls and, perhaps their interior walls, from bumps by trucks and other vehicles inside and outside of the building. Such a bumper could be formed from scrap tires deployed in the same manner as the tire fence around whatever needs the protection. Interior fence tires would not need a drain hole, and possibly, they would not need any binding material. Stacked against the wall of the building, the wall itself may be the only stabilization needed. If one or more tires are knocked out of position, they can quickly and easily be restored by hand.
The resistance to bumps can be increased by adding something rigid near the area likely to receive the bumps, which rigid member will press against more than one tire when the bump occurs. For example, a 2×6 plank of substantial length could be attached to the face of the bumper fence to receive the bump. This would further lessen the indirect force of the bump against the wall of the building to avoid damaging the wall.
If aesthetics are important, the bumper fence could be totally or partially covered with something flexible.
The space above the bumper fence could be made more useful by placing a rigid member above or simply resting it atop the bumper fence to create a shelf or counter. The shelf or counter should be set back from the face of the bumper fence to allow a reasonable amount of flex from the bumps the fence is designed to take, without contacting the shelf or counter.
Vehicle bumps are a major cause of the deterioration in appearance and functionality of metal buildings. Conventional methods of protecting walls against such hazards are either expensive or marginally effective. The tire bumper fence effectively protects the walls and is either cheap or conceivably free to the building owner. It finds a safe storage place for scrap tires and makes them functional, turning a liability into an asset with virtually no conversion costs. This use solves a societal problem as well as a problem of the building owner.